UK Games Expo 2014 Tournament and other awesomeness!

The UK Games Expo is nearly upon us!

This means Stak Bots will be 1 year old!! To celebrate we have a number of exciting things appearing around the time of the expo…

1. The Yellow Expansion officially launches!

Those who were kind enough to back the project on Kickstarter have already been enjoying the new Bots, but they will be on sale officially for the first time at our stand at the expo and also available to retailers through our distributor Esdevium Games.

It features 16 new Bots across 60 cards, a number of new game variations and toggles, and brings so many new options with deck-building!

2. The first official Stak Bots tournament is happening at the Expo!

There are prizes for the top 4 places and the winner will be getting a uniquely printed card, made specially for the event!

Champion Bot has all the strengths of Leader Bot, but none of its disadvantages! (Consequently its rank is slightly higher). No longer must you fear Pit Bots and Tranq Bots!

There will be more Champion Bots appearing in the future, but they will only ever be awarded to the winners of the larger tournaments. Each will have its own text at the bottom, to show where and when it was won, so even though there will be more in the future, each will be a unique card!

For now, the winner of the tournament will be the only person in the world with this Bot. Even I don’t have one

The details of the tournament gameplay and deck building for it can be found at the bottom of this post

3. Stak Bots – Drones is coming to your web browser!

Built on the 1-player / solo / solitaire mode listed in the Yellow Expansion rules, Drones will see your single Stak battling multiple Drone Staks!

Release date TBC, but it’s soon

4. Stak Bots – Bloks is also coming to your web browser!

See the Bots like never before, across many levels in this crazy physics based puzzlish adventure!

Each Bot stays true to its functions in the card game; use Levi-Bot to lift Bloks to the top of the screen, aim carefully with Shot Bot, cause extra destruction with Bash and Spike, or watch Clumsy do its thing!

It also sees the debut of Quake Bot, Rocket Bot, Bomb Bot and Jump Bot!

Again, release date is TBC, but check back here soon!

5. Stak Bots IOS gets a re-release!

Within a week or two, the ever-addictive IOS app will be getting a re-release as a paid app with various fixes and tweaks.

What do you get for your money? No more IAPs!!! Yay! Everything is unlocked; custom decks, all the Bots and no adverts. All for the cost of one unlock on the free app.

Can I keep using my free version? Yes. But please consider buying the new version; you’ll benefit from the bug fixes and also be supporting the game; the more downloads we get, the sooner we will be able to add more Bots to it!

Is that enough exciting news for you?!

I hope so, I’ve been too busy sorting all this out to do much else!

As ever, feel free to get in touch with any comments or questions, and hopefully I’ll be seeing some of you soon at the Expo for a game

Tom

————–

Tournament game structure:

Match-ups will be using the Swiss system. There may be elimination rounds to determine the top final placings, depending on time constraints. Each match-up will be best of 3, with a maximum of 3 games, so a draw is possible.

Each player will have just one Stak, 9 cards deep, with 3 cards in hand.

Roll a dice to determine the player who goes first each round; that player does not draw a card on their first turn.

Gameplay is per the original instructions, additionally using the ‘starting entry effects trigger’ and ‘reactive play’ toggles.

Tournament Deck construction:

Each player will need a deck of 60 cards, with 10 of each rank and no more than 5 copies of a specific card (e.g. Core Bot rank 4). Only cards from the original and expansion packs are to be used (sorry, no Magnet or Backer Bots; Magnet is over-powered for single Stak and Backer Bot involves swapping of card ownership so could cause problems!!).

The original and expansion packs would each be suitable to use on their own, or as a good starting point to modify.

You will be using your same deck in every round in the tournament, with no card substitutions between rounds or match-ups.